By mid January a cold snap reach the area; with modified arctic air in place from the 10th through the 16th, with 5" of snowfall at Sea Tac. Heavier snow fell elsewhere, especially with arrival of the arctic front when up to 10" of snow fell. January averaged close to normal across western Washington for temps and precip, although Sea-Tac came in 3 deg F below average. February was a little below average for total rainfall, although light rain fell most days, it was a drippy month. Snow arrived with a Puget Sound Convergence Zone and a cold upper level trough at the end of the month. By daybreak on March 1st, a blanket of snow laid across southern Whidbey island, and east through Snohomish and northern King counties. Amounts ranged from a typical 4" snow depth in Mountlake Terrace, to around 10" just a little further north, with areas further east in Snohomish county like Lake Stevens, and even the Monroe/Sultan area getting up to around 10 inches.

As of mid March, snowpack at the ski areas and Paradise was near normal.

NOAA Examining Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

NOAA is constantly seeking better and more cost-effective strategies to meet its mission goals and responsibilities including evaluating emerging technologies. The agency is exploring use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) platforms as one such technology. A UAS can potentially help ‘see’ weather before it happens, detect toxins before we breathe them and discover harmful and costly algal blooms before the fish do. Recently, NOAA convened an internal UAS Steering Committee. This group identified a range of diverse areas within NOAA that could potentially benefit from the use of UAS, including climate and weather, oceanic and atmospheric research, monitoring and evaluating ecosystems and endangered species, monitoring wildfires, and mapping and charting. For more information about UAS, visit this web site – http://uas.noaa.gov/

Our active convection season usually begins around March 1^st with two peaks, both during our transitional seasons into and out of winter - fall and spring. April is usually our peak month for convection. In our history, many of our tornadoes have occurred in April and May, including the only three F3 tornadoes ever reported.

Fortunately, most Washington tornadoes are weak F0 or F1 Fujita Scale events, and touch down and back up in up to two minutes. These kinds of tornadoes are usually not apparent on NWS Doppler Weather Radar and often more than one occurs in a day. Skywarn (TM) spotter reports are very important in the effort to help protect lives and property.

Now is the time to dust off your spotter field guide and brush up on your convective weather spotter skills. If you need another field guide. contact Ted or Jay at 206-526-6095, and we’ll mail you a copy.

Report tornados, waterspouts, funnel clouds, and rotating wall clouds as soon as you can, along with the location and direction of movement. Remember the distinction between a funnel cloud and the more common western Washington "scud" cloud? As emphasized in our training class, look for rotation, ROTATION, ROTATION.

Thunderstorms also can produce strong damaging winds, flash or urban flooding from heavy rainfall, large hail, and lightning. Remember your lightning safety rules. Lightning is dangerous. Washington averages one lightning related death every two years, and several injuries each year. If you can hear thunder, you’re close enough to be struck by lightning!

Report pea-sized or larger hail with any damage if noted. Also report heavy rainfall of at least one-half inch in an hour or less. If you see flooding of any kind and/or winds of at least 35 MPH, contact us.

Your spotter reports are a key element in the effort to protect lives and property. Keep an eye to the sky when you learn of a threat of thunderstorms via NOAA Weather Radio, our web site, or from local media. To help raise public awareness, NWS offices throughout the Pacific NW plan to conduct a Severe Weather and Wildfire Awareness Week during the week of May 6. See weather.gov/seattle in early May for more information about this awareness week.

Spotter Notes

The staff at NWS Seattle wants to thank all of you who provided numerous spotter reports during this active winter weather season. Your reports that included snowfall, heavy rainfall, flooding, landslides, strong winds, downed trees and power outages provided valuable input to hazardous weather statements as well as information to area emergency management officials and media. Keep those reports coming!

Early this year, NWS Seattle had a booth at the Seattle Boat Show, addressing questions and offering NWS product and service materials to the 67,000 attendees. In February, we had a booth and held four aviation weather seminars at the NW Aviation Conference and Trade Show, again reaching out to over 12,000 members of the area aviation community. Members of our Spokane and Portland Forecast Offices and Auburn Air Traffic Control Center Weather Service Unit joined in that effort.

A part of our job is to address and meet our customer’s weather information needs and requirements. Outreach efforts like these provide great opportunities to meet and talk with our customers. Later this year, other outreach efforts will include the Partners In Emergency Preparedness conference in April in Tacoma, DeafNation 2007 Expo in Seattle and the Washington State Emergency Management Association conference in Spokane both in September, and the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle in November.

Over 150 people, the greatest number in attendance this year were at this year’s annual workshop in early March at the NOAA Western Regional Center in Seattle. A number of presentations addressed severe weather events during the past year including many of the significant weather events from this winter. The workshop began with the announcement of the Name the Wind Storm contest for the December 14-15 wind storm. The name selected was The Hanakkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006 nominated by 40 people. See our web site at weather.gov/seattle for more details about the wind storm name. Banquet speaker Kim Taylor of the Mt Rainier National Park addressed the flood damage to the park from the early November major floods. Several weather spotters were among those in attendance at the workshop. Next year’s workshop is slated for March 7 and 8.

Washington Governor Gregoire asked President Bush for federal assistance following the early November 2006 major flooding and the Hanakkah Eve Wind Storm. President Bush agreed, permitting federal dollars to reach state and local authorities to help recover from these disasters.

Skywarn (TM) Weather Spotter Training was held in King, San Juan and Pierce County early this year. About 135 people attended these training sessions – welcome to the Skywarn (TM) team!

More spotter training is planned for later this year, particularly this fall. Check our web site periodically at weather.gov/seattle under the Spotters link for training announcements.

Aberdeen was recognized as a TsunamiReady community in March. Aberdeen became the sixth Washington community to be recognized as TsunamiReady and the 40^th in the nation. TsunamiReady means the community has a hazardous weather and tsunami response plan and exercises that plan, multiple ways to receive tsunami and storm information from the NWS as well as disseminate that information to their community, monitor ongoing weather and tsunami conditions, as well as an ongoing community outreach and education program. Congratulations to Aberdeen!

Temperature – Above normal

 Precipitation – no correlation

 Mountain Snow Pack – below normal primarily at lower elevations due to the warmer temperatures

 El Nino typically begins to impact our area’s winter weather close to the end of the calendar year.  This year, its impact was slow to become apparent – in early January. Even then, it was not a strong impact for our area in contrast with other parts of the country.  Now, the warm sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have cooled and El Nino has ended.